TV REVIEWS

TV REVIEWS; 'OUR WORLD' RECALLS '69

By JOHN CORRY

Published: September 25, 1986

''OUR WORLD'' is a retrospective. What did things look like in, say, the summer of 1969? More accurately, what did things look like on television? ''Our World,'' the new ABC magazine program at 8 o'clock tonight, uses old film to show us. There are worse ways to spend an hour than in watching.

The program presents Linda Ellerbee and Ray Gandolf as hosts, narrators and reporters. They perch on stools in front of what is supposed to be an old newsstand, then segue into glimpses of the past. ''Think of this not as a television studio,'' Mr. Gandolf says, ''but as a combination of your grandmother's attic and the old neighborhood.'' The magazine show, Miss Ellerbee continues, will be ''the stuff of yesterday.''

Then we go to yesterday: 1969 in Cocoa Beach, Fla., when the space program was a national mania; Gulfport, Miss., struck by Hurricane Camille; Chappaquiddick, Mass., and Senator Edward M. Kennedy; Woodstock; views of Vietnam; Beverly Hills and Bel Air, Calif., after the Charles Manson gang butchered seven people. We see other events and places, too.

Was all this only 17 years ago? Was the summer of '69 when Jacqueline Onassis turned 40, Judy Garland died and the Smothers Brothers were dropped from prime time? It does seem like yesterday, except, of course, if you are in your teens or 20's. Presumably, then, it is faded history.

Nonetheless, Miss Ellerbee and Mr. Gandolf, who also co-wrote the program very gracefully, do have a quiet sense of humor about the past, and they do have events in perspective. There may not be much point to some of what we see or hear: the recollections of a man, who, 17 years ago, slept in the house next door to a house struck by the Manson gang, are not terribly interesting. Also, why is Mr. Gandolf, in one brief sequence, in the middle of a California desert?

Perhaps it doesn't matter. ''Our World'' - produced by Rolfe Tessem and Vincent Stafford - is a scrapbook, and scrapbooks aren't always zippy; on television, they sometimes turn turgid. On the other hand, ''Our World'' does have Miss Ellerbee and Mr. Gandolf, and there's something good to be said for that. If Mr. Gandolf looks like your favorite uncle, Miss Ellerbee looks like that interesting woman who lives down the street. The point is, they look like people. Therefore, there's no particular news or journalistic reason for Miss Ellerbee to tell us that she was in Eagle Pass, Tex., in 1969, worried about ''diaper changes and feedings,'' although it is nice to know. We like Miss Ellerbee for giving us the information. It means she is one of us. If we are going to look at a scrapbook, it's better we should look at it with someone we know.

''Our World'' concludes with a small wrap-up; '69 may have been the time of the counterculture; John Wayne still won an Oscar for playing a marshal in ''True Grit.'' The program lets you figure out the significance of this, if there is any, yourself. ''Our World'' is a pleasant hour.